When i decided to take this task on i never thought it would be this hard to rig. my main goal is to create a rig for a slinky so that it can go down a set of stairs. Im currently working with maya 8.5. most the tutorials i have seen on the internet just cover springs and dont go into any detail on how a spring should bend. any advice would be brilliant cheers

scazmaniac

01-17-2009, 01:10 PM

i have tried using a lattice, to a degree it does work but it deforms

vvkonline

01-17-2009, 07:13 PM

I've seen it done with nCloth look up "Duncan blog"

scazmaniac

01-17-2009, 11:13 PM

thanks for your help vvkonline. are there anymore tutorials online to make a slinky?

crazee-student

02-17-2009, 12:31 AM

hey. i was just wondering if you ended up figuring out how to rig the slinky properly. i just started a slinky project. did you find a good tutorial?

scazmaniac

02-18-2009, 01:15 PM

i unfortunately couldnt find a tutorial about slinky rigging in maya. some of the good tutorials were created using other programs.

in the end i experimented with curves and cvs to create the rig of the slinky. i created a curve using the create cv curve option then i created clusters hightlighting various points of the curve. i then extruded the curve using extrude in the surfaces menu.

some degrees of the animation do work it just takes a while to get it right. if you do use this method you need to have a good sense of timing otherwise you'll be having to tweak it which will take hours.

i ended up creating three sets of joints for the slinky and i made a motion path for each of them to follow along with. at the moment it moves around; it rotates and translates fine. the only trouble is that it wont compress to a sitting pose. and when its moving the ends compress a little.

JasonStockton

03-27-2009, 06:58 PM

Have you tried using a wire deformer?

crazee-student

03-28-2009, 05:32 PM

i have no tried that. fore i dont know what it is. aha. what is that?

atm what i have is workng i just have to work on painting the weights so the geometry doesnt explode when i move it. :)

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